Random thoughts and Poodles

The Saga Continues

Immigration

Everyone told us the process was challenging. I thought I had all my ducks in a row and that, for us, it would be a breeze. Well….

Paperwork

In my last post, I mentioned about the fact that everything on your paperwork has to match your passport. Apparently, this also includes your receipt for the fee you paid. Since this was done before we knew how important this was, when we went back to immigration with the new, corrected form, we were told that our receipt was wrong.

Lord have mercy. Could they not have told us this the previous time? It seems that they get to a problem and…just…stop. If they had looked through everything, we could have corrected this, too. But no.

The Money Pit

Apparently, this is not as easy as getting a new receipt or simply correcting the old one. The money is gone. Disappeared. Vaporized. Vanished. We have to pay this amount again.

The HR person at Lyn’s office said we will eventually get it back by filing a tax form, but that takes some time. Right now it means we are out $5,000 MX. This is half of money month’s pay for one of us. So $10,000 is an entire month’s pay.

Dallas Bound

Did I mention that I still have to go through this process? Next week I head back to Dallas to get my permanent resident visa, which was held up until I could prove, by way of an Apostille birth certificate, that I am who I say I am.

Once again, I am getting up at oh-dark-thirty to catch a 6 a.m. flight for 24-hours in Dallas. Another $1,000 US bites the dust!

Hopefully this will be the last trip. After that, I have to do the immigration dance Lyn has just been through. Of course, all of this is just the beginning. There is more to be done, once this initial part is completed. We still don’t have plates for our car. We have to register with immigration and notify them of any changes to our status, etc. Of course, they will take taxes out of our checks, as piddling as they are. Yikes.